also traveling around the North Island. I got into Auckland and went to the Nomads hostel where I was staying, and was pretty tired from everything from the week before so didn’t do very much but go to sleep after wandering around the city a bit. It’s not a very huge CBD, really easy to navigate and get around; it’s got a harbor and some parks and is known as the City of Sails because of all the boats. I got up the next day and got breakfast at the grocery store, then passed out on the couch watching the rugby league of NZ vs England. NZ won I found out later, I was just so tired and could not stay awake. My friend Alex picked me up at 1pm, he was my across the hall neighbor at Union the first semester I was there and it was really good to see him again especially after having to leave everyone from college the day before. We went around the city a bit, went to One Tree Hill and walked around. The hill is this really big park, there are sheep just wandering around everywhere and people hiking around or playing ball, its for sure a cool area to have in the city. We went back to Alex’s house and watched some Mighty Boosh episodes (amazing show, everyone check 
it out), and he even got me all 3 seasons on a jump drive he found at his uni, pretty excited about that. I got to meet his family, it was funny to be back in a family environment again with all the arguments and everything, reminded me of home. His two brothers are funny, you can definitely see the famlily resemblance, they're like different versions of Alex. His mom is so so nice, really cool woman, she did architecture, not sure what she’s doing now but is really into art and is a great cook. Had an awesome dinner of kebabs and sausages, potatoes, salad, and a pavlova with great fruit. It was amazing after coming from Union cafeteria that had been getting progressively worse while trying to use the rest of their leftover food in the back of the fridge as the end of the year was coming up. Two of Alex’s friends were also over for dinner, they were cool guys and we went and climbed up this hill near his house after dinner and watched the clouds and just chilled out. Went back home and watched some more Mighty Boosh, and then got dropped back to the hostel at 12:30 or so, passed out hard and got up at 6:20 the next day to start my trip south to a couple towns in the North Island.I got a bus pass where you can get on and off the bus at different stops and stay as many nights as you want before getting back on the bus. It was called the Magic Bus, and it was quite magical. I got on in Au
ckland and mostly slept until we got to Waitomo, where we stopped for a couple hours to explore the caves that are in the area. You could do a wet option or dry option, and I chose the blackwater rafting trip where you go through the cave while sitting in these tiny inner tubes with helmets and headlamps and thankfully wetsuits because it was pretty cold. It was really awesome, at some points everyone had their headlamps off and you could see tons of glow worms on the walls. It looked so cool, they are neon green and glow brighter if you make a big noise, so the guides would smack the water hard with something and the worms would get really bright. The cave was really fun to explore, there is a section where you had to jump off a ledge back into the creek below and also a waterslide that descended into a black hole, it was a somewhat surprising when it ended partially at a wall. I slammed my leg into it a bit, it seemed like that was not the optimal end point for a waterslide but it was fun anyway. This was de
finitely not the way that a tour like this would be set up in the US, I could think of many lawsuits that could be filed against this place if it were at home. It was awesome though, the guides were neat too. They were both really country guys, one older white guy and a really big Maori guy with three teeth, and you couldn’t hardly understand anything they were saying because they had really strong accents. We got to the end and they gave us soup after we showered, which was really nice because it was a pretty cold and rainy day. I had already realized that my thin sweatshirt and many pairs of shorts were not the best choice of things to bring to NZ, it really is a much different climate from Australia. But I did survive with my thin sweatshirt and mostly board shorts the whole week, was pretty bad one night but didn't want to buy more stuff to carry around, so I pretty much just put up with the cold.Pix: Auckland city, our rafting guide, me after jumping off one of the drops in the cave back into the creek, and the rafting train.
No comments:
Post a Comment